hmmmm lets see, I can set my kid up for life, paying his college fund and getting him a decent start in life, no this certainly doesn't make up for any molestation but it is certainly better than the alternative of get nothing and hope the legal system finds him guilty
The two did not need to be mutually exclusive. Had the accusations been deemed valid and a guilty verdict handed down as a result, the parents could have then sued him after that. Instead they dropped the charges - an almost unquantifiably selfish and greedy choice - and took the money.
Nothing can ever compensate for molestation but I would hardly call anyone bad parents that uses such a disgraceful act to help their child in life.
Who says that they actually helped their children with the money? They could have blown it on crack for all we know.
Every time I drive through NJ I pump my own gas, not because I'm anti-full service, but because they move so damn slow. I have better things to do than sit in my car for ten minutes waiting for an attendant to show up, especially if I still have a 2 hour drive ahead of me.
Can't you cross NJ in a single tank of gas? You might want to consider either planning your fuel stops better, buying a more efficient car, or just not driving through New Jersey.
but then for dropping the charges in exchange for money. No decent parent, regardless of their financial situation, should ever be willing to compromise on matters of the law in exchange for money. Ever.
The criminal justice system exists for the benefit of society (at best)
Which is precisely why a parent needs to see that a perpetrator who hurt their child is properly handled by the criminal justice system. If someone commits a crime against your child, you owe it to all the other children to see that the crime does not go unpunished. Otherwise the criminal will very likely commit a similar offense with another child later, and that offense will be your responsibility because you chose not to prevent it.
Indeed, any interaction between the criminal justice system and children is always an epic fail.
Not necessarily. What is an epic failure, however, is when the media grabs on to allegations and reports them as factual occurrences to the general public. When that happens we end up with mobs of idiots who are convinced of facts that were never established in a court of law or in any fair venue.
If they dropped the charges because of money they are bad people.
Agreed.
If they understood that pressing charges would have done their children even more harm and took the money anyway, why not?
That is an epic case of not seeing the forest for the trees. As I stated before, the parents had an opportunity - if the offense was indeed committed - to ensure that it would not happen to other children. For whatever reason they chose not to follow up on that opportunity.
Naturally a small army of people started threads here asserting their certainty that Michael Jackson actually did what he was accused of doing.
Yet not one of those people bother to point out that there was never a criminal conviction on those charges. Instead they keep bashing him over what can't be taken to be anything more than accusations.
And if you think he did do what he was accused of, the person you should really be directing your anger at is the parents of the child who was victimized. Those parents would be roughly the fourth or fifth worst parents in the world; not only for allowing their young child to spend the night with a weirdo but then for dropping the charges in exchange for money. No decent parent, regardless of their financial situation, should ever be willing to compromise on matters of the law in exchange for money. Ever.
As the summary stated, he's forfeiting shares of stock that are worth millions. This is bonus money that he is essentially declining; he's not writing anyone a check for $14M.
And of course, he is still paid handsomely on top of that anyways.
Then why do I own a Wii, and a small collection of the better games for it?
You are a very strange consumer, to intentionally buy a system whose graphics you previously described as
suck ass
I would never purchase a car for regular use whose handling or performance was "suck ass". I would never pay for an OS whose stability was "suck ass". So whether or not you intentionally went out and purchased a gaming system whose graphics, in your words, "suck ass", I don't know. Hell for all I know you might have a nuclear-powered BetaMax in your living room as well, and maybe a LaserDisc player with the special uber-secret edition of Star Wars as well. I can't see your belongings nor can I read your mind as to why you did or did not purchase things you do or do not own.
All I know is a couple messages ago you very specifically said that you feel the Wii's graphics
Consider this: Sony sold just 1.5 million copies of Singstar in the US, but over 16 million in Europe. Those are exactly the kind of gamers who will get a Move for their family or friend game nights.
Except that Singstar is a game that often includes the microphone; no almost-$100 hardware investment (or more for multiple players) required. Getting people to buy into PS3 Move will not necessarily be so easy...
"Wii games can be pretty fun sometimes, especially with a few mates around having a laugh, but why can't we have something similar where the control scheme is a bit less dodgy, and the graphics don't suck ass?"
If you are such a total snob for uber-high-res graphics that you would describe the display of the Wii as "suck ass" then you are simply not the target market for the Wii or its games, and you would likely never find anything from that library worth buying.
I'm pretty sure there's a fair few people asking that question.
They are probably only asking that question between long rounds of online play on their XBox360 or PS3 and would stop asking it once the next Halo, Gran Turismo, or Final Fantasy game comes out.
It's also that the PS3 includes a hard drive which allows for a lot of downloadable content! This makes a big difference in games like Guitar Hero/Rock Band, which I recommend getting for PS3 or Xbox, not for Wii. The stupid thing is, the Wii has USB ports, so it could easily add an external hard drive or flash memory.
I don't know what you do with your Wii, but it does have some internal storage capacity (albeit not a lot). That is how your system stores your Miis, amongst other things. If you were to download any virtual console or WiiWare games, they would go there; you can also add an SD card to it for more storage capacity.
Hence it really isn't fair to imply that there is no capability to download more stuff to the Wii out of the box; I have a few VC titles on my Wii and have yet to buy an SD card to put in it...
My biggest complaint about the Wiimote (besides it's imprecision) is the wire between Wiimote and numchuck -- it's shorter than the distance between my hands. I would have preferred 2 separate wireless devices rather than 1 device with a tether to another device; it's just awkward.
There are third party wireless nunchucks for the Wii. While they are not official Nintendo products, they would do exactly what you want. Personally I think it would have been smart for them to make wireless classic controllers as well, but they haven't done that either.
That's why PS3 sales will never exceed Wii sales; if you can afford a PS3, you can probably afford a Wii as well!
And considering the Move is a PS3 add-on that costs nearly as much as a Wii...
Actually I was going more along the lines of "people who buy a Wii most likely already own a DVD player; they aren't likely to buy a PS3 with the Move just because the PS3 is a Blu-Ray player as well". Indeed I suspect they would be more likely to buy the Wii instead, since for the pile of money needed for "PS3 + Move" you can buy "Wii + games + Wiimotes + more games" and have money left over.
I keep thinking Sony has delivered an answer to a question nobody is asking. You can buy a Wii brand new for $150 at any store you like, or you can spend $400 on a PS3 with the Move hardware. Sure, the Sony can play Blu-Ray, but people don't buy the Wii to play DVDs so why would they care about Blu-Ray? And even if the hardware is superior, it doesn't have the library of games available that the Wii already has.
The other end of the potential market would be people who already have a PS3 but really want Wii-like controls, but how many people does that segment represent? How many people who play Final Fantasy 28 on their PS3 finish playing that for 912 hours straight and then say "gee, I wish I could do Wii bowling on this console"?
The slightly cynical side of me wonders if this is just Sony trying to find a way to stick it to Nintendo (again) after the way that the SNES CD (later PS One) deal went down.
(I'm assuming I'm right when I've heard that in the US you pay for the SMSes you receive)
It all depends on the plan you have for your phone. A lot of plans are bundled with "unlimited texting", which presumably means both ways. On the opposite end of the spectrum are plans like mine (I send less than 10 text messages in an average month) that don't include any messages. I actually pay to send and to receive; 15 cents each. Hence if I send a message to someone and they reply by text that is 30 cents I just kissed goodbye to. In the middle are plans that include some number of send or receive messages per month.
On a related note I was at the mall over the weekend with my wife and we walked past the store for our carrier. They are now offering "family texting" plans - useful since we have a family plan for our phones - for $20 a month on top of the cost of the plan itself. Then I did the math and realized we would have to send/receive at least 130 messages a month to make it make sense; so we kept walking...
I rarely send 10 in a month, and I'm not really that old.
My first cell phone was a Qualcomm 2700 dual band on Sprint PCS (back when they were called that). Maybe since I started off using a phone to make phone calls the idea of text messaging didn't have that much appeal to me when it became a big idea several years later?
My cable modem uploads at around 100k, and I don't have any problem with that. What exactly are these people doing on their cell phones that is so important that they can't tolerate an upload speed that is only 50% faster than my cable modem?
And yes, I can upgrade my cable modem to faster service for a price but I willingly have so far opted not to; I find my current cable modem to be more than sufficient for my own needs.
I will never understand why something like mario all stars wasn't more popular among game companies. There's so many old nes properties that were fun, loved by everyone, and could have gotten a huge benefit from a graphical makeover and collection. You'd even see things like the mega man collection for the mega drive, or the snes ninja gaiden collection. But they'd miss the opportunity and make only the most minor of graphic upgrades.
So they are offering the first 4 Super Mario Bros games on one disc for around $30. The same 4 games can be purchased for your Wii through the virtual console for $5 each - totaling $20. I guess if the disc, manual, and soundtrack are worth another $10 to you, then go for it. Otherwise just buy the ones you want (or all 4 of them) as downloads and enjoy the savings.
Slashdot Mirror
hmmmm lets see, I can set my kid up for life, paying his college fund and getting him a decent start in life, no this certainly doesn't make up for any molestation but it is certainly better than the alternative of get nothing and hope the legal system finds him guilty
The two did not need to be mutually exclusive. Had the accusations been deemed valid and a guilty verdict handed down as a result, the parents could have then sued him after that. Instead they dropped the charges - an almost unquantifiably selfish and greedy choice - and took the money.
Nothing can ever compensate for molestation but I would hardly call anyone bad parents that uses such a disgraceful act to help their child in life.
Who says that they actually helped their children with the money? They could have blown it on crack for all we know.
Every time I drive through NJ I pump my own gas, not because I'm anti-full service, but because they move so damn slow. I have better things to do than sit in my car for ten minutes waiting for an attendant to show up, especially if I still have a 2 hour drive ahead of me.
Can't you cross NJ in a single tank of gas? You might want to consider either planning your fuel stops better, buying a more efficient car, or just not driving through New Jersey.
but then for dropping the charges in exchange for money. No decent parent, regardless of their financial situation, should ever be willing to compromise on matters of the law in exchange for money. Ever.
The criminal justice system exists for the benefit of society (at best)
Which is precisely why a parent needs to see that a perpetrator who hurt their child is properly handled by the criminal justice system. If someone commits a crime against your child, you owe it to all the other children to see that the crime does not go unpunished. Otherwise the criminal will very likely commit a similar offense with another child later, and that offense will be your responsibility because you chose not to prevent it.
Indeed, any interaction between the criminal justice system and children is always an epic fail.
Not necessarily. What is an epic failure, however, is when the media grabs on to allegations and reports them as factual occurrences to the general public. When that happens we end up with mobs of idiots who are convinced of facts that were never established in a court of law or in any fair venue.
If they dropped the charges because of money they are bad people.
Agreed.
If they understood that pressing charges would have done their children even more harm and took the money anyway, why not?
That is an epic case of not seeing the forest for the trees. As I stated before, the parents had an opportunity - if the offense was indeed committed - to ensure that it would not happen to other children. For whatever reason they chose not to follow up on that opportunity.
Naturally a small army of people started threads here asserting their certainty that Michael Jackson actually did what he was accused of doing.
Yet not one of those people bother to point out that there was never a criminal conviction on those charges. Instead they keep bashing him over what can't be taken to be anything more than accusations.
And if you think he did do what he was accused of, the person you should really be directing your anger at is the parents of the child who was victimized. Those parents would be roughly the fourth or fifth worst parents in the world; not only for allowing their young child to spend the night with a weirdo but then for dropping the charges in exchange for money. No decent parent, regardless of their financial situation, should ever be willing to compromise on matters of the law in exchange for money. Ever.
all mayor hardware vendors of PCs and mobile devices
Please do not ever make me picture Steve Jobs naked again.
I've heard that even when Steve Jobs takes off all his clothes, he still has a turtleneck and jeans on. So you really don't have anything to fear...
Bottom line: Flash sucks ... big time.
There, fixed that for 'ya
With that problem solved, what can we fix with the rest of our afternoon?
Seriously. I mean, how do you get to the mental state that you give up 14 million in order to get into another job?
He will make a lot more than $14M before he retires from Oracle...
As the summary stated, he's forfeiting shares of stock that are worth millions. This is bonus money that he is essentially declining; he's not writing anyone a check for $14M.
And of course, he is still paid handsomely on top of that anyways.
...a company made successful by copying, created so much original technology.
That's right, their GUI also had pasting!
Since it won't be long until the DHS bans clothing from flights for being too dangerous...
Then why do I own a Wii, and a small collection of the better games for it?
You are a very strange consumer, to intentionally buy a system whose graphics you previously described as
suck ass
I would never purchase a car for regular use whose handling or performance was "suck ass". I would never pay for an OS whose stability was "suck ass". So whether or not you intentionally went out and purchased a gaming system whose graphics, in your words, "suck ass", I don't know. Hell for all I know you might have a nuclear-powered BetaMax in your living room as well, and maybe a LaserDisc player with the special uber-secret edition of Star Wars as well. I can't see your belongings nor can I read your mind as to why you did or did not purchase things you do or do not own.
All I know is a couple messages ago you very specifically said that you feel the Wii's graphics
suck ass
.
Consider this: Sony sold just 1.5 million copies of Singstar in the US, but over 16 million in Europe. Those are exactly the kind of gamers who will get a Move for their family or friend game nights.
Except that Singstar is a game that often includes the microphone; no almost-$100 hardware investment (or more for multiple players) required. Getting people to buy into PS3 Move will not necessarily be so easy...
"Wii games can be pretty fun sometimes, especially with a few mates around having a laugh, but why can't we have something similar where the control scheme is a bit less dodgy, and the graphics don't suck ass?"
If you are such a total snob for uber-high-res graphics that you would describe the display of the Wii as "suck ass" then you are simply not the target market for the Wii or its games, and you would likely never find anything from that library worth buying.
I'm pretty sure there's a fair few people asking that question.
They are probably only asking that question between long rounds of online play on their XBox360 or PS3 and would stop asking it once the next Halo, Gran Turismo, or Final Fantasy game comes out.
It's also that the PS3 includes a hard drive which allows for a lot of downloadable content! This makes a big difference in games like Guitar Hero/Rock Band, which I recommend getting for PS3 or Xbox, not for Wii. The stupid thing is, the Wii has USB ports, so it could easily add an external hard drive or flash memory.
I don't know what you do with your Wii, but it does have some internal storage capacity (albeit not a lot). That is how your system stores your Miis, amongst other things. If you were to download any virtual console or WiiWare games, they would go there; you can also add an SD card to it for more storage capacity.
Hence it really isn't fair to imply that there is no capability to download more stuff to the Wii out of the box; I have a few VC titles on my Wii and have yet to buy an SD card to put in it...
My biggest complaint about the Wiimote (besides it's imprecision) is the wire between Wiimote and numchuck -- it's shorter than the distance between my hands. I would have preferred 2 separate wireless devices rather than 1 device with a tether to another device; it's just awkward.
There are third party wireless nunchucks for the Wii. While they are not official Nintendo products, they would do exactly what you want. Personally I think it would have been smart for them to make wireless classic controllers as well, but they haven't done that either.
That's why PS3 sales will never exceed Wii sales; if you can afford a PS3, you can probably afford a Wii as well!
And considering the Move is a PS3 add-on that costs nearly as much as a Wii...
Actually I was going more along the lines of "people who buy a Wii most likely already own a DVD player; they aren't likely to buy a PS3 with the Move just because the PS3 is a Blu-Ray player as well". Indeed I suspect they would be more likely to buy the Wii instead, since for the pile of money needed for "PS3 + Move" you can buy "Wii + games + Wiimotes + more games" and have money left over.
I keep thinking Sony has delivered an answer to a question nobody is asking. You can buy a Wii brand new for $150 at any store you like, or you can spend $400 on a PS3 with the Move hardware. Sure, the Sony can play Blu-Ray, but people don't buy the Wii to play DVDs so why would they care about Blu-Ray? And even if the hardware is superior, it doesn't have the library of games available that the Wii already has.
The other end of the potential market would be people who already have a PS3 but really want Wii-like controls, but how many people does that segment represent? How many people who play Final Fantasy 28 on their PS3 finish playing that for 912 hours straight and then say "gee, I wish I could do Wii bowling on this console"?
The slightly cynical side of me wonders if this is just Sony trying to find a way to stick it to Nintendo (again) after the way that the SNES CD (later PS One) deal went down.
(I'm assuming I'm right when I've heard that in the US you pay for the SMSes you receive)
It all depends on the plan you have for your phone. A lot of plans are bundled with "unlimited texting", which presumably means both ways. On the opposite end of the spectrum are plans like mine (I send less than 10 text messages in an average month) that don't include any messages. I actually pay to send and to receive; 15 cents each. Hence if I send a message to someone and they reply by text that is 30 cents I just kissed goodbye to. In the middle are plans that include some number of send or receive messages per month.
On a related note I was at the mall over the weekend with my wife and we walked past the store for our carrier. They are now offering "family texting" plans - useful since we have a family plan for our phones - for $20 a month on top of the cost of the plan itself. Then I did the math and realized we would have to send/receive at least 130 messages a month to make it make sense; so we kept walking...
I rarely send 10 in a month, and I'm not really that old.
My first cell phone was a Qualcomm 2700 dual band on Sprint PCS (back when they were called that). Maybe since I started off using a phone to make phone calls the idea of text messaging didn't have that much appeal to me when it became a big idea several years later?
My cable modem uploads at around 100k, and I don't have any problem with that. What exactly are these people doing on their cell phones that is so important that they can't tolerate an upload speed that is only 50% faster than my cable modem?
And yes, I can upgrade my cable modem to faster service for a price but I willingly have so far opted not to; I find my current cable modem to be more than sufficient for my own needs.
mario is older than me by a month and a day!
Although I suspect it took you a bit longer before you could throw fireballs out of your nose...
I will never understand why something like mario all stars wasn't more popular among game companies. There's so many old nes properties that were fun, loved by everyone, and could have gotten a huge benefit from a graphical makeover and collection. You'd even see things like the mega man collection for the mega drive, or the snes ninja gaiden collection. But they'd miss the opportunity and make only the most minor of graphic upgrades.
You mean like Battletoads?
Br
... the Chattanooga Choo-Choo!
So they are offering the first 4 Super Mario Bros games on one disc for around $30. The same 4 games can be purchased for your Wii through the virtual console for $5 each - totaling $20. I guess if the disc, manual, and soundtrack are worth another $10 to you, then go for it. Otherwise just buy the ones you want (or all 4 of them) as downloads and enjoy the savings.